RECORDINGS.

Skinny Williams and Erwin Helfer

August 19, 2003|By Steve Knopper.

St. James Infirmary (The Sirens)

At 67, Chicago pianist Erwin Helfer no longer bothers with fancy solos. He aims for soul and feeling, as you can tell on his sad reading of the Percy Mayfield standard "Please Send Me Someone to Love." The former Big Mama Yancey accompanist is in constant flourish mode, but his improvisations are drenched with melancholy, not speed, giving the effect of a late-night jazz bar after all your friends have gone home. While local saxman Skinny Williams gets top billing on this instrumental-duo CD, Helfer is the engine. He provides the boogie-woogie backbone in "Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue" and ad-libs, from walking blues to Thelonious Monk's "Blue Monk," throughout Fats Waller's "Ain't Misbehavin'." Boogie is perhaps Helfer's fallback idiom, but his fingers are filled with the travails of bebop jazzmen and barrelhouse masters alike.